Celebrating my 1 year Hockeyversary with a pack of Panini Stickers

My brother and I went up to the mall to pick up this year's Christmas ornaments, and hopefully pick up a blaster of Hoops and Upper Deck Flagship, so I could open my first pack on my 1 year anniversary of becoming an NHL fan. (see my previous post) Well, our normally well stocked Target wasn't. Hoops was already gone in Blaster/fatpack form, and the wall hanger box was almost empty. (I did snag some packs out of it). Upper Deck's flagship hockey set was not in the store at all. It was either already sold out, or, more likely, never put out yet. Our local Target is USUALLY well stocked, but sometimes they are not. There have been a couple of times where they didn't get an NBA set out until after the NPN already expired, for example. So, I struck out there. There was only ONE pack of 17-18 Panini Stickers for hockey left in the store, so naturally, I consoled my striking out on my intention by buying this pack. And all this was before the Black Friday insanity!

Just because I feel like it, and have not posted much lately, I'm going to share the contents of the anniversary sticker pack here on the blog. Since it was something I did special for my anniversary, it should be documented for all time, right? I'm going to pretend what I have to say is important enough that it is.

 This drawing of Erik Karlsson was first out of the pack. Panini currently does something in their hockey sticker set called "Illustrated Players" and this was my first example from this year's set. (This is the 4th pack I've opened) What he did against the Rangers in the playoffs last year was pretty darn amazing considering he was playing with a broken foot.

Two drawings in a row. I don't know what it is about hockey that allows players to have incredibly long careers. Chara has been in the NHL since 1997, and that's not even talking about Jaromir Jagr who's been in since 1990!

 

Black and white image on foil. Meh.  That was three straight foil cards to start the pack...

Wayne Simmonds is going to go down in history as my first All-Star MVP. He got a pickup truck for that. 

Every time I get a card or sticker, or see a highlight of him I start thinking "Take On Me" even though the band was Aha and not Aho. Close enough that my mind makes the connection. 

This is his third time appearing in my collection, and I don't think I've spelled his last name properly even once yet. Not on purpose, I just keep leaving out a letter, this time it was V. Usually it's the F. Luckily, the way my paper listing works, it doesn't really matter if a name is spelled right, as long as it shows the card is present for that number. And no one will ever see it, which is good because the way I've mangled things over the last 20 years is laughable/embarrassing. 

He has a dog named Pickle. Seriously!

With Blogger's "Extra Large" setting, my preferred for card images, these are actually going to show up larger than the stickers really are. Panini does a good job with them, I enjoy them quite a bit. Like I mentioned before, this was my 4th pack of the season. I wish I had gotten more, but they are pretty much impossible to find once my local Target sells out. You never see them in repacks. I do count them as part of my collection now, I wish I had gotten more of them over the years when I had the opportunity. I was hoping to get a Golden Knights sticker- this set was the team's first appearance on a card (or something close enough that I count it as a card) but no such luck. Nor did I get any new people for my collection, or any Rangers. I'm not unhappy though, because there were no duplicates and it brings me 7 cards stickers closer to completing the set.

I also opened a pack of 2010-11 Upper Deck Series 2 and 2011-12 Victory that I got at a sports collectibles store in the mall, but all of those cards were already done on the Trading Card Database, so I set them aside for future scanning someday. I did get new people in those packs, and you can see them on the bottom of the NHL tab on the "People in My Collection" page. I just wanted to plug a favorite feature I have not talked about much. I can't even remember the last time I went to the mall beyond Target, but it was a fun trip even if I didn't find everything I was looking for.